Homo Religiosus, By Karen Armstrong

While humans may have progressed remarkably in science, technology, engineering, medicine, and other fields, our ego and our selfish motives have held us back from achieving our most important goals. By accepting ego into our lives, we are essentially giving permission for our pride to allow itself to come between us and our goals. Our ego is basically a self-image of who we are. With most it being deeply subconscious, our ego creates the inner “I” in our self and controls certain aspects of our lives. While it can be beneficial, our ego does more harm than good. As Armstrong explains, “we instinctively feel that that we must protect the fragile ego from anything that threatens it” (Armstrong 16). With that in mind, it is also important to understand that our ego is only a product of our creation. Like fear, our ego can also be broken so that we can begin to fill our lives with positivity and happiness. Barbara Fredrickson, in her “Love 2.0”, Karen Armstrong, in her “Homo Religiosus”, and Robert Thurman, in his “Wisdom” all offer different perspectives and techniques that allow us to remove this inner ego and invoke positivity in our lives. In a general sense, positivity resonance, self-abnegation, and yoga all go hand to hand in achieving a similar result of happiness and success.